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Friday, 22 February 2013

SOCIAL MEDIA SITES PROMOTE FREEDOM

More people than ever before are using social media sites
such as Facebook to oppose the undemocratic regime in Swaziland.

Research just published shows that people use the Internet
to communicate with one another and share information and ideas about the
campaign for democracy, bypassing the Swazi mainstream media which is heavily
censored.

People who live inside the kingdom and those abroad join in
the debates and share information about activities designed to bring attention
to the human rights abuses in the kingdom, ruled by King Mswati III, sub-Saharan
Africa’s last absolute monarch.

The research, published in Ecquid Novi African Journalism Studies, looked at a number of
blogs, Facebook sites and a Google discussion group to study what they were
publishing and see how people used them to share information.

Young people in Swaziland have been using the Internet not
only to interact with one another but also using Facebook to ‘influence opinion
with a view to effecting change in Swaziland’ and ‘voice their anger at the
established ruling regime’.

A survey of some of the most active sites showed they
contained information about prodemocracy activities in Swaziland such as protest
marches, the delivery of petitions to government ministries and strikes.

Unlike the mainstream media in Swaziland these sites also
published material critical of King Mswati and the royal family.

The report suggests that the sites ‘appear to have
relatively small, but seemingly highly committed, participants as originators
and / or readers’.

The report suggests that the social media sites have
extended opportunities for people to share information and commentary about the
need for democratic change in Swaziland, but they have not necessarily been an
empowering force.

‘It is clear that social media sites have extended the
public sphere to offer opportunities for a wider range of people both in the
country and outside it, to produce, distribute and exchange information and
commentary about the kingdom – especially in the context of the need for
political change. People speak in their own voices and are not mediated in the
way mainstream media are in Swaziland.’

However, the research suggests, ‘There is little evidence
that social media sites are capable of becoming vehicles for actual change in
Swaziland.’

It uses the example of the April 12 Uprising Facebook group
from 2011 that had clearly-stated objectives to encourage an uprising
in Swaziland along the lines of those witnessed during the ‘Arab Spring’ of
2011.

Despite a large interest online in the group’s postings, it
was unable to turn its aspirations for uprising into actual action on the
streets.

The research speculates it was possible the April 12
Uprising Facebook site may have generated ‘unrealistic excitement and
anticipation on the part of the general population who became mere spectators,
while the bulk of those who had generated the Facebook hype resided outside the
country and could not coordinate activities on the ground to actuate their
cyber aspirations’.

The research concludes by suggesting the uprising failed
because the factors necessary for revolution in Swaziland were absent.

‘Among such conditions are that the regime must appear
irredeemably unjust or inept, and must be viewed as a threatto the country’s future, and that the
political elite should be alienated from the state to the extent that they are
no longer willing to defend it.

‘In addition, broad-based mobilisation across
social-economic classes must follow; and international powers must either
refuse to step in and defend the government or prevent it from using maximum
force to defend itself.’